The present invention relates to a spatial information using system and in particular to a space information using system for providing image information regarding a position at which the image information is obtained.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) uses information sent from 24 satellites (operated by the United States Department of National Defense) orbiting the earth to measure the positional relationship between a receiver and each satellite to calculate the latitude and longitude of the position of the receiver. While a typical commercial use of the GPS is a car navigation system, devices of a new concept using the GPS have become available recently.
A typical example of this is a camera including a GPS unit (GPS camera). The GPS camera contains a GPS receiver and a direction angle sensor, for example, and records the position (latitude and longitude) and direction angle (the direction of a shot object) at the time of shooting to allow image information as well as the location and the photographed part of the photographed object to be displayed in concrete form. Examples of applications of the GPS camera include academic studies, environmental investigations, and photorecording of facilities and sites. For example, Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 8-88825 discloses a method for editing images of engineering works to indicate the progress of construction by using a GPS camera. Recently, technologies have been proposed that provide positional information services to a movable body and/or a third party through various media such as a cellular phone service, electronic mail, and facsimiles by combining a microminiature GPS unit and a cellular phone.
By using a conventional GPS camera, for example, a given image can be recorded and the recorded image can be effectively used as a resource. In addition, using and storing additional information such as positional information, date and time, information on a photographed part and angle facilitates accesses to the image record. However, these technologies using a GPS camera are not enough to provide an opportunity to derive other information about a photographed object.
On the other hand, a pedestrian or a user of a motor vehicle can obtain information about his/her surroundings in a limited range (the name and service of buildings and stores) and retrieve given information by accurately specifying an object of interest and accessing by radio a network such as the Internet through a device such as the above-mentioned cellular phone including a GPS unit. However, the prior arts involve many tasks by the user for selection and determination and require a significant amount of intervention of the user for specifying the object. In addition, they provide poor real-time performance and are not practicable in terms of ease of use.
One approach is to structuring geographical information as geometric information consisting of shape information and positional information to create a database. In that application, a scenario is provided in which when a user having a handheld device sends a question, xe2x80x9cHow can I get to point B from point A by following a real road communication?xe2x80x9d, for example, to a communication server through a mobile communication system, navigation information is sent back onto the screen of the handheld device as the result. However, this approach in this publication provides only geographic information (a map, for example) based solely on geometric information to the user. It is difficult for this approach to provide other additional information. In particular, the publication does not describe any technology for holding image information (landscape information) itself captured by a camera, for example, which contains a large amount of data and is difficult to be structured, in a database.
The present invention solves these technical problems. In one aspect it provides methods, apparatus and systems to allow a user moving in the open air to obtain information about an object in real time that the user wants to obtain.
It is another aspect of the present invention to allow the user who are moving in open air to add the user""s own annotation (additional information) to image shot by the user and to store it in a remote server.
An example embodiment of the present invention is characterized by a spatial information using system comprising a client apparatus carried by a movable body and a central system for providing predetermined information to the client apparatus, wherein: the client apparatus comprises a camera for obtaining image information and a positional information obtaining device for obtaining positional information about the client apparatus and sends the obtained image information obtained and positional information to the central system; and the central system extracts additional information about an object contained in the image information based on the image information and the positional information received and sends the additional information to the client apparatus.